Sep 26
Still praising the Jerusalem Bible
I know it’s got its faults as a translation, but I’ve always (as one or two previous posts indicate) had a great fondness for the Jerusalem Bible. I suspect that one reason for it is that as Catholics just set free by Vatican II, its translators weren’t constrained by centuries of Bible English. More successfully than the NEB (perhaps because less contrived) it finds a natural English style, often appropriately colloquial, but at the same time draws on a wider English vocabulary, and more literary range of expression than most dynamic equivalence Bibles There are some particularly good examples in the story of Paul in Athens (Acts 17:16 ff) After each example I quote what seem to me the better among several other translations.
Verse 18 a
Some said: “Does this parrot know what he’s talking about?” (JB)
Some said, “What is this pseudo-intellectual trying to say?” (HCSB)
Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” (NIV)Verse 18 b
“He sounds like a propagandist for some outlandish gods” (JB)
“He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” (NIV)Verse 21
The one amusement the Athenians and the foreigners living there seem to have, apart from discussing the latest ideas, is listening to lectures about them.” (JB)
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. (NIV)
Now in all of these, I freely admit the JB tends to paraphrase, and tips outright into it in the last of these examples, while catching Luke’s scorn to perfection. But they are all examples of how often the text sounds fresh, English and natural. This is a translation that is too easily overlooked in Protestant circles, and while I’m glad that the New Jerusalem Bible has toned down some of the JB’s flights of fancy, and textual adventurousness, I still regret that it has lost some of these touches of genius that could make reading the text a verbal delight.
September 26th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I love my old JB
September 27th, 2007 at 12:13 am
A great post — lots of fun. I like the JB’s treatment of the New Testament, but I think it fails to capture the formal stylistic features of the Hebrew Scriptures. One parallel edition that is very nice is the Oxford Catholic Comparative New Testament which contains the Rheims, RSV (Catholic edition), NRSV (Anglicized edition), NAB, JB, NJB, GNB, and Christian Community Bible. The latter CCB is not particularly useful, but the other translations are all helpful.
I wish Oxford would issue a parallel edition of British translations of the late twentieth century: NEB, REB, JB, NJB. Failing that, I wish the NEB, REB, and JB were available for Logos.
I am not sure I fully understood your swipe at the NEB for its being “contrived.” Perhaps you could post sometime on what you mean by this.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:33 am
While you’re waiting for a fuller post, Iyov, let me try to explain “contrived” briefly. I think there was a conscious effort to avoid KJV phrasing, even when that phrasing was (perhaps slightly updated) more than adequate, so that sometimes unnatural choices were made. Sometimes that led them away from a normal English vocabulary into an artificially literary or Latinate one. My favourite example is Philippians 4:5 “Let your magnanimity be manifest to all.”
February 15th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
[...] Jerusalem Bible for its capacity to surprise and delight with felicitous [...]